The Successful Manager's Guide to Selling Through Proactive Customer Service: How to Reduce Inside Sales Costs and Keep Customers Buying Forever (Ring-bound)

by Lee R. Van Vechten (Author) "The journey began with me taking a career gamble..." (more)
Key Phrases: proactive customer service, expressive persuasive, proactive sales, Sales Admin, Sales Mgr (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
" ... describes specifically how to use a PROACTIVE approach to customer service, that can truly change the future of your company. " -- Mike Welsch, Vice President, Operations, Telespectrum Worldwide Inc.

"A practical, effective approach to staff, train and manage your customer service to meet customer's needs and grow profits." -- Jeff Cleary, Managing Director, Catalyst Direct

"We have experienced an up-turn in our retention rate and have increased our bottom line revenue." -- Philip Head, Director, Inside Sales and Support, OfficeMax, Inc

Product Description
The most successful companies always have separate telesales and customer service departments. But, now there is something new that the cutting edge companies are doing that is increasing sales at a LESSER cost of acquiring those sales.

It's a third method of using the phone for customer contact and sales: Proactive Customer Service.

So, what IS Proactive Customer Service?

It is not purely customer service, nor is it hard core outbound selling.

It is NOT simply cross-selling or upselling on the inbound call.

It is not taking your reactive customer service reps and having them place calls in their spare time (which, we all know means they mysteriously have less and less spare time).

It is NOT having your highly compensated and skilled outbound sales reps follow up on inbound price requests or call customers and say,

"How's it going?"

"Do you need anything this week?"

"How are your supplies doing?"

"Wanted to make sure everything is OK."

"Can I quote on anything?"

"Any projects coming up?"

"Can I help you in any way?"

In a nutshell, the concept is quite simple:

Calling your regular customers on a regular basis.

That, in and of itself is not necessarily new. But doing it in a planned, organized way, with the right people, managed and compensated in the right way, within a properly-designed departmental infrastructure, is a new concept.

Proactive Customer Service is an entirely new position or department within the organizational chart. It is method of selling over the phone that lies between proactive outbound selling and reactive customer service. It generates more sales, from existing customers, but at a lesser cost to the organization than proactive outbound selling.

By using Proactive Customer Service you have regular contact with customers, which means you maintain, build, and grow better relationships with them, while protecting them from the competition.

And you can learn, step-by-step, how you can implement Proactive Customer Service, the right way, from telesales management expert Lee Van Vechten, who has tested and refined the process. He shares all of the secrets with you in "The Successful Manger's Guide to Selling Through Proactive Customer Service--How to Reduce Inside Sales Costs and Keep Customers Buying Forever."

MORE BENEFITS OF PROACTIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE

By using Proactive Customer Service you can, Manage and grow accounts that previously received little or no contact.

Take advantage of opportunities to cross sell and upsell so as to maximize revenue from accounts, while providing the ultimate in customer satisfaction

Minimize customer attrition do to lack of attention. You build customer loyalty since they are being contacted more often by 'their' representative.

Your customers have ONE point of regular contact, meaning greater satisfaction, and greater likelihood of buying from you regularly

Bottom line--this says it all--you can extend the lifetime value of your customers, while LOWERING overall sales costs. More sales for less money means more profits.

WHO CAN BENEFIT FROM PROACTIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE?

How do you know if doing Proactive Customer Service is for you? See if you can identify with any of the following:

Companies that now pay too much in compensation for simple tasks such as following up on inquiries, taking orders from customers--orders that the customers would have placed anyway!

Companies that each year increasingly lose customers and sales volume due to lack of customer contact (or worse: who don't KNOW why they're losing customers and sales)

Companies that have tried proactive telesales, but didn't have or couldn't find the personnel necessary to handle that role, but yet still desire to proactively contact their customers

Companies that generate sales through direct marketing (mail, catalog, internet) but do not contact the customers personally afterward in order to get repeat a

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Ring-bound: 130 pages
• Publisher: Business by Phone (July 1, 2002)
• ISBN-10: 1881081168
• ISBN-13: 978-1881081166
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 11.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #913,134 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hands off...this book doesn't leave my office!, March 26, 2003

By	Ron Doan (San Jose, Ca) - See all my reviews

Great book to refer to! It doesn't leave my office, although many have tried...none have succeeded.

Seriously...it has helped our firm extensively. Highly suggested!

Ron Doan
Director, Marketing
Cisco Systems, Inc.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must have for any Customer Service department!, March 21, 2003

By	Elisa Frederick (Redmond) - See all my reviews

Too bad this is not made with a hard cover because I use mine so much the spine is about to fall apart. This book has helped me create and maintain a strong CS department. I really did use it on a daily basis for the first month or so after I purchased it. Two thumbs up here...

Elisa Frederick
Group Product Manager
Microsoft